Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

Willow had been too but remained quiet. He was about to turn on 32 Mile Road but Lydia told him to stay on North Avenue.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s not too far now,” she said.

Soon they were passing the canopies of tall trees that stood like stoic guards along the ingress of an ancient castle. The leaves had already begun to change. Banks of wildflowers beckoned from a thousand entrances to the forest. “There,” she said, pointing to a dirt road. “Slow down or you’re going to miss it!”

He did, and had to back up. They drove awhile before she told him to stop. “This is it. We’ll need to walk from here.” She climbed into the backseat and stripped off her uniform, changing into the hiking clothes that she’d packed in her duffel. She left the car, jogged in place and then started up the trail. He was still sitting at the wheel, lost, when she called to him. “We can say goodbye here, or you can follow me.”

He got out and set after her. It was a rail trail and he felt that was apt. The defunct tracks of a ghostly train came in and out of view, covered over by dirt and clumps of hop clover and spectral Indian pipe. Willow grew winded and a few times she waited for him to catch up. He idly wondered if he would be able to find his way out. He had a fleeting thought that it might be better if he didn’t.

She stopped on a high ridge, staring out at the pastureland below and the world at large. Willow knew she was doing as the Guide ’s epilogue suggested—thanking “that big, beautiful Blue Earth, the Mother Earth who nurtured you and those you loved, and to whom you returned for your moment of balance . You must thank Her before you take your final leave.” When he reached her, he bent over to catch his breath. She let him, before asking if he’d say the Lord’s Prayer with her, like at the end of their Meetings.

After Amen , she made her final remarks.

“I want to thank Maya and Troy. What beautiful little beings they were—so loved, by so many!—I wish them well on their journey. And how can I thank Lydia Molloy? Such a good woman, such a strong and smart woman. The world will miss her… and Daniel the Lionhearted! Deputy Daniel Doheny, I thank you on my brother Troy’s behalf. Daniel had such anguish in his life but now he’s free. My brother thanks Lydia too! We were both so honored.” Willow saw tears in her eyes and had the somewhat clinical thought, How is it that the dead can cry? She turned to him and took his hands. “And I want to thank you , Willow Wylde, for supporting us, and walking us through every step of the way. My Porter! How lucky we were, and how lucky are the children who are coming! Father! Father! Goodbye—”

And just like that she ran up the hill to seek the gully where months ago she had lain.

3.

He wanted to make love but Dixie wasn’t having it.

Her excuse was a horrible migraine that started in the morning. She looked like she had a bad headache—he didn’t think it was connected to not having invited her to Daniel’s memorial, but who knew. When he asked if she wanted to sleep alone, she said no, she wanted company. At least that was a good thing. He got a cold rag and draped it across her eyes, then drew a hot tub for himself.

He was confident in his decision to resign from the Cold Case Task Force. He would tell Owen tomorrow, in person. That was something he wasn’t looking forward to, but he knew the sheriff would understand. He hoped the meteoric success of his brief tenure would assuage any disappointment. Willow thought about what he was going to say—he’d thank him profusely for having given him the opportunity and then haul out the “I’m too old for this” trope. He was prepared for the sheriff to try to dissuade him by countering with a bonus or steep raise; in light of recent events, the county’s vote for an infusion of funding to the unit was a fait accompli. He would promise to stay on and train a replacement.

As for his duties as Porter, he was done with those too.

His decision was partly triggered by Lydia’s crisis of faith. On that last journey together, she had voiced her doubts about the essential validity of the moment of balance . Willow had been having those same heretical thoughts himself. Listening to her, he was reminded of something that Renata, his Buddhist friend, once told him about the Wheel of the Dharma. The idea was to be free of the Wheel—not to take on another body or some other incarnation, but to reach a state of no-yearning and no-craving, to escape the dogma of justice and retribution, to go beyond hatred, even beyond love. Would the Eakinses be forgiven? Could they be? He didn’t know the answer but sensed it was irrelevant: there could be no freedom until there were no longer any questions. The truth is that he didn’t want to exchange one task force for another, which is what Annie’s program seemed to be: just another job with standards, protocols and endgames—Spec Ops from the Unknown. He remembered that time at Penn Station when he asked about becoming a porter. The man corrected him by saying they called them service attendants now . The little scene wasn’t too far off the mark, because that’s just what Willow felt like—a drunk with delusions of supernatural grandeur, applying for a gig whose name he couldn’t get right.

As he soaked, he reread the note from Annie that the sentry gave him at the funeral home. She included a Wordsworth poem (he’d googled it earlier) about a man who encounters a strange little cottage girl. When he asks if she has brothers and sisters, she declares, “We are seven,” even though two are dead—“two of us in the churchyard lie.” When the man says that if two siblings have departed, then she only has four, the girl insists he’s wrong.

He sunk the note in the bathwater, watching the ink run together.

1.

It went better than he thought.

Then why did he feel worse when it was done?

He wondered if bailing from the task force was a blunder. Yet each time he had such doubts, the detective realized it was a symptom of his general confusion—a mélange of money worries combined with a shudder of foreboding. The awkward part came at the end, when Owen gave him the Look—the one Willow knew he’d be getting from friends and family over the next few weeks and months, even years—the one that said, Hope you stay sober! The Look had nuances akin to regional accents. In the sheriff’s, he heard this one: Bet you’ve already started — you probably never stopped. Prolly faked your piss test too.

He painted over the mural of the train with primer, praying the blank space might lend itself to a new chapter. But resigning from Cold Case was one thing; resigning from Annie’s Meetings was something else. When he first joined AA, hadn’t his sponsor suggested not making any big moves for at least a year? Don’t try to quit smoking. Don’t get married. Don’t quit your day job. Drama and instability always got you drunk.